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The deepest sort of slander, the rabbis of the Talmud contend, is the type
that was employed by Haman, the Purim story's villain. The arch-enemy and
would-be destroyer of the Jewish people in ancient Persia used subtle
innuendo as he spoke to the king about his Jewish subjects. Instead of
openly venting his visceral hatred, he utilized snide insinuations --- that
the Jews were insular, unloyal, disdainful, dangerous.

Anyone who may have recalled that Talmudic observation over the Purim
holiday may well have been struck with its timeliness --- or perhaps better,
timelessness. Subtle slander of Jews is no farther away than the nearest
newspaper.

The fact that some American Jews (though, polls have shown, hardly a
disproportionate number in comparison with the general American population)
have joined many others in finding solace in the prospect of a world without
Saddam Hussein in control of dangerous weapons has been portrayed by some as
sinister; American Jews have been accused of pulling a puppet President Bush
's strings. Much of the Arab and European press, predictably, are among the
slanderers, as is, equally predictably, Pat "Amen Corner" Buchanan, who has
been railing of late against the "War Party" of neoconservatives William
Bennett, William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and Richard Perle. Mr. Bennett
is the odd man in the conspiracy, a Christian.

Representative Jim Moran seemed of similar mind, reportedly telling a Jewish
reporter that "if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community
for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing it." After being taken to
task for his words, the Virginia democrat said that he regretted "giving any
impression that [Jews] are somehow. behind an impending war." No doubt the
regret is sincere, but he did not address the question of whether he
actually believes what he said.

Much of the vilification is aimed, of course, at Israel. Like the words of
Amiri Baraka, the former LeRoi Jones, who has been warmly welcomed with
standing ovations at college campuses in the wake of the controversy over a
poem he wrote. In addition to a scatological insult aimed at Colin Powell,
a questioning of Condoleeza Rice's morals and a juvenile pun on Clarence
Thomas' name, "Somebody Blew Up America" includes the immortal lines: "Who
know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion/And cracking they sides at
the notion." and "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/ Who
told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/ To stay home that day /Why did
Sharon stay away?"

Mr. Baraka, who was appointed poet laureate of New Jersey by that state's
governor before the official became aware of the poem, was asked to resign.
He refused, blaming his persecution on the ADL and on "paid liars and
apologists for ethnic cleansing and white supremacy, bourgeois nationalists"
and, in an amusingly ironic addendum, "the dangerously ignorant."

There is apparently no legal mechanism in New Jersey for firing an official
state poet (or, it seems, for changing the title from poet laureate to
village idiot) and so Mr. Baraka remains in his position.

Taking a cue from the headlines these days, Mr. Baraka, in a long, rambling
and only occasionally lucid diatribe, denied that his poem is anti-Semitic.
He asserts that he was only remarking on what he believes was Israel's
foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks (a belief he explains was
"everywhere on the Internet"), and contrasts the "little Palestinian girl
who blows herself up in a Israeli Pizza Parlor" with Israeli jets "all but
destroy[ing] the Palestinian Center of Governance, with its President,
Yasser Arafat, inside sitting in the dark." He is amazed that "it is the
Israelis who are [perceived as] victims and the little Palestinian girl or
boy or young man or young woman or even elder, they are the terrorists."

For his part, Mr. Buchanan, too, goes after Israel, asserting that she, as
the "recipient of $100 billion in U.S. aid, is demanding another $15 billion
to hold our coat as we fight her war against Iraq."

Much of the contemporary Jew-hatred is indeed, in top slander-style,
presented as hatred of Israel. But, as Agudath Israel of America's late
president Rabbi Moshe Sherer contended almost thirty years ago, it is mere
anti-Semitism in costume.

In 1975, after the famous "Zionism is racism" United Nations resolution,
Rabbi Sherer wrote: "Through the resolution was supposedly aimed only at
secular 'Zionism'.the slander is an attack on the entire Jewish people."

"In truth, through," he continued, even if hatred was aimed only at certain
Jews, "we [traditionally Orthodox Jews] would feel precisely the same
responsibility to come to the defense of our brethren. While we may have our
own quarrel with secular Zionism, when Jews are libeled, their affiliation
does not matter; our love for our brothers and sisters draws us to their
side." And, what is more, the celebrated Jewish leader observed most
pointedly, "the U.N. resolution is aimed at all Jews, for it assails the
historical Jewish right to Eretz Yisrael. The Torah bestowed that right and
any attack on it is an attack on Judaism and the Jewish people."

Behind the United Nations' austere fašade, he went on, "lies a veritable
jungle, crawling with well-dressed, diplomatically correct savages."

The more things change.

In Haman's time, as we just heard at the Megilla reading if we were paying
attention, the Jews in Persia were delivered from their enemies through a
determined turning to G-d, by fasting, repenting and recommitting to Jewish
observance. As we survey our own increasingly bizarre and hateful world,
all of us should seriously consider doing no less.